Obamacare’s Latino Push May Give Democrats Political Edge

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, Republican from Texas, speaks to reporters after ending his talk-a-thon on the floor of the Senate on Sept. 25, 2013. Cruz, whose Cuban lineage makes him one of the most prominent Latino Republicans, described himself in June as “Obamaphobic” in response to the president’s efforts for overhauling immigration policy. This week, he co-opted the Senate floor for more than 21 hours to protest the health law. Photographer: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

Sept. 30 (Bloomberg) -- The battle over Obamacare is taking
on political importance as Democrats hope a successful roll-out
among Hispanics will further bind those voters to the Democratic
Party and undermine Republican efforts to build more support
before the 2016 presidential election.

In California, where Hispanics will outnumber whites within
a year, backers of the Affordable Care Act are ramping up
outreach in places like Richmond, a San Francisco Bay Area city
whose population is almost 40 percent Hispanic and where about
18 percent of residents live below the poverty line.

“A lot of the long-term implications, partisanship-wise
and electorally, are going to depend on how well the outreach
does,” said Gabriel Sanchez, an associate professor of
political science at the University of New Mexico.

Getting Latinos to enroll in Obamacare won’t be an easy
task, said Dulce Delgadillo, 28, a research assistant at
Harder+Company, a San Francisco-based community research firm.

“There is a general fear of government by that
population,” Delgadillo said in an interview at an Oakland
health fair. “And there is a huge gap in knowledge” about the
law’s benefits.

Miguel Cajas, 55, a Peruvian-born truck driver from
Richmond who is a U.S. citizen, pays $800 monthly for health
coverage, making it tough to support his family of five on an
income of $22,000 a year, he said.

Cajas last year was diagnosed with a cancer of the blood
cells. While he’s pretty sure he’ll reduce his costs through
Obamacare, he’s not so certain he’ll get the same level of care
he receives now, he said.

Without the same benefits, and if the cancer comes back,
“I’ll be in big trouble,” he said.

Texas, Florida

About 61 percent of Hispanics approve of the health-care
law, compared with 29 percent of whites and 91 percent of
blacks, according to a Pew Research Center and USA Today survey
conducted Sept. 4-8. Hispanics will outnumber whites in
California next year for the first time and will represent
almost half of residents by 2060, the state’s Finance Department
said in January.

Lack of knowledge about Obamacare continues to be a big
issue among Hispanics, said Sanchez. They see the law as
“complicated and confusing,” he said in a telephone interview.

Government Shutdown

A threatened U.S. government shutdown and a growing list of
delays involving new exchanges may not make potential enrollees
more confident. While the shutdown won’t stop the exchange roll-out, which is largely funded through mandatory appropriations
that can’t be curtailed by congressional inaction, it’s an open
question whether it will lessen public enthusiasm to enroll. In
the meantime, technical glitches are beginning to surface.

People in Oregon, for example, won’t be able to enroll in a
plan for the first few weeks unless they go through a broker or
designated nonprofit groups, and the exchange in the nation’s
capital won’t include premium prices until mid-November.

Nonetheless, such complications haven’t surfaced in
California and Latinos “remain much more enthusiastic about the
law than the general population,” Sanchez said.

“Ultimately, a large number of Latinos will enroll and
they’ll overwhelmingly like it,” Gary Segura, a political
science professor at Stanford University, said in an interview.

Mario H. Lopez, president of the Hispanic Leadership Fund,
a Washington-based group advocating limited government,
disagreed.

Opposing View

“There’s no question that Obamacare is a disastrous
health-care policy for the entire country, including the Latino
population,” Lopez said in a telephone interview. “The more
you explain, the more people get it.”

The $1.4 trillion Affordable Care Act seeks to extend
coverage to most of the nation’s 50 million uninsured. Coverage
begins in January, and most people will be required to have
public or private health coverage or pay the higher of 1 percent
of their annual income or $95, a penalty that grows to 2.5
percent of income or $695 by 2016. A network of insurance
exchanges where consumers can buy subsidized plans, the core
part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, opens tomorrow.

Latinos represent 46 percent of the 2.6 million California
residents eligible for subsidized coverage, said Santiago
Lucero, a spokesman for Covered California, which runs the state
insurance exchange.

Fanning Out

Community group representatives have been fanning out for
weeks to farmers’ markets, job fairs and grocery stores across
California to inform the public about the law as state insurance
exchanges are scheduled to begin enrolling people tomorrow.

Shanti Jensen, a health educator who works for the Fresno-based California Health Collaborative, said she’s visited about
two dozen events and talked to about 400 people after completing
two days of training last month.

Her organization got a $940,000 grant from Covered
California to get the word out to uninsured women.

Standing next to her booth at a farmer’s market in Richmond
on Sept. 20, she asked passersby if they know of anyone who
needs health insurance. She offered brochures in English and
Spanish with a sign overhead that read “Informacion,
coveredca.com.”

At the Oakland health fair, Nayeli Cruz, a 21-year-old
part-time college student, said she can’t afford to see a doctor
on her annual salary of about $20,000 since getting cut off from
Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program, a couple of months ago.
She plans to sign up for insurance under the Affordable Care
Act.

‘Constant Comfort’

“Mainly, for me it’s the constant comfort that in case I
do get sick or my asthma acts up, I’ll be fine,” Cruz, who
voted for Obama in 2012, said in an interview.

Genoveva Garcia Calloway is the mayor of San Pablo, a city
about 20 miles from San Francisco whose population is 57 percent
Hispanic. She said Obamacare in California will succeed.

“It might have its kinks to work out, but it’s not going
to fail,” Garcia Calloway, 63, said in an interview at the
Richmond farmer’s market. “There are just too many people who
need this.”